Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed an anti-trans bill SB 0016 into law on Saturday, making Utah the first state in 2023 to ban safe and age-appropriate gender-affirming health care for trans youth so far, as reported by CBS News. Sadly, we can’t be confident Utah will be the last. This particular legislation bans gender-affirming surgeries as well as puberty blockers and hormonal therapies. The law goes into effect on May 3, 2023—but youth with a gender dysphoria diagnosis before the law goes into effect will be able to continue treatment.
You might recall that Cox vetoed signing an anti-trans bill into law—back in 2022, Cox vetoed an anti-trans sports bill into law that sought to bar trans girls from participating in girls' sports teams. At the time, Cox referenced research on trans mental health and suicide rates, writing that he wants “them to live,” and didn’t want to harm or exclude vulnerable youth.
But he’s clearly singing a different tune. “While we understand our words will be of little comfort to those who disagree with us,” Cox wrote in part in a statement. “We sincerely hope that we can treat our transgender families with more love and respect as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures.”
Mind you, the bill has exemptions for youth who are intersex or those who have “medically necessary” conditions like precocious puberty… so it’s really not the treatments that are concerning, it’s using them to treat gender dysphoria that’s the problem.
In a word: Ugh.
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Republican State. Sen. Mike Kennedy, who sponsored the bill, argued that the bill was necessary because he believes gender-affirming care has too little “sufficient long-term research.” Given that Kennedy is a physician himself, it’s possible his word carried special weight.
But that’s really, really unfortunate if so, because a number of major accredited medical organizations, including the American Psychological Association (APA), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the American Medical Association (AMA), are all in solid agreement that safe and age-appropriate gender-affirming care can be not only appropriate for youth but life-saving.
Like a number of anti-trans and anti-queer bills in the works, this one has penalties for physicians who want to do the right thing and provide this necessary care anyway. For example, the measure allows patients to sue providers for malpractice if the person “later disaffirms consent” for such gender-affirming care before they are 25. It also requires an additional certification for physicians who provide hormonal treatments to youth.
The reality is that research, again and again, supports the need for safe and age-appropriate gender-affirming health care. A super recent example comes to us from a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, as highlighted over at LGBTQ Nation, which found that hormone therapy improved the mental health of people between the ages of 12 and 20 who received such care. Researchers tracked a small sample of 315 trans and nonbinary youth for two years and found that participants who received hormonal therapies reported higher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of depression and anxiety.
Studies like these are important because it shows longitudinal data for families (including young people themselves) and their health care providers information to help them make better personal decisions. And those are really the only people who need to be involved: Republicans can keep their hands off our bodies!